Alona Parks

What happens when death stretches beyond biology and bleeds into the digital world? Imagine if a digital afterlife wasn’t just a sci-fi plot or a privacy policy clause but a standard option—where a person’s online presence continues, in some form, after their physical body ceases to function. It sounds like something out of a Black … Read more

Free brain implants — sounds like science fiction, right? But imagine if they weren’t. Imagine a world where anyone could get a cognitive-enhancing chip in their head at zero cost. It’s tempting to picture a utopia where intelligence is limitless, memory flawless, and creativity boundless just because everyone’s plugged in. Yet, there’s a gnarlier side … Read more

Imagine living in a world where a simple scrape or a common sore throat could spiral into a deadly ordeal. That’s the haunting reality of life without antibiotics—a reality that, until the early 20th century, was humanity’s everyday existence. The discovery of antibiotics revolutionized medicine in ways few breakthroughs have. But what if they had … Read more

Imagine a world where the internet arrived not in the 1990s, when neon-lit Netscape browsers and dial-up tones ruled the airwaves, but instead in 1965—an era steeped in analog charm, vinyl records spinning, rotary phones clicking, and television sets buzzing with fuzz at the edges. What would that have looked like? More importantly, how would … Read more

Most people imagine the Cold War as a tense stalemate—a shadow dance between nuclear superpowers marked by espionage, proxy wars, and ideological brinkmanship. But what if the Cold War had suddenly gone hot for just one week during the 1980s? What kind of chaos would have erupted, and how might that brief inferno have reshaped … Read more

Medieval Europe, around the year 1200 AD, was a world of flickering candles, smoky hearths, and laborious, sun-driven routines. Imagine, though, if electricity—a technology we take for granted—had arrived on the scene at that time. What if the great Gothic cathedrals and bustling market towns had been lit and powered by electric currents rather than … Read more

Europe’s history is largely shaped by waves of migrations, conquests, and cultural exchanges that flow across continents—mostly from east to west, from Asia through the Middle East and into Europe. But imagine a dramatically different current in that historical ocean, one where Polynesian navigators, with their incredible mastery of the Pacific, reached Europe before the … Read more

Imagine this: one day, somewhere in an obscure particle physics lab or deep space observatory, scientists discover evidence of a fundamental force beyond the four we know—gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Such a finding would shake the very foundations of physics and possibly rewrite the story of reality as we’ve come … Read more

Human history is a maze of turning points, moments where a single event reshaped the course of entire continents. The Black Death is undoubtedly one of those monumental ruptures. But what if it never happened? Imagine Europe and the wider world without losing an estimated one-third to sixty percent of its population between 1347 and … Read more

Rome’s fall in 476 AD marks one of those monumental ruptures in history that everyone talks about like it was the ultimate turning point—the so-called plunge from glorious empire to medieval chaos. But what if that didn’t happen? What if Rome, with all its infrastructure, laws, and cultural heft, had somehow dodged collapse? Would roads … Read more